


The Beginning

by emeraldsea



Series: Through the Years [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M, Phan - Freeform, Romance, Slow Build, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-06-28 05:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19805917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeraldsea/pseuds/emeraldsea
Summary: A 2009 Dan is trying to figure himself out, and along this journey, he finds out that on top of being someone bullied for being gay, he has fallen in love with not just any guy, but a social media personality, which throws him into further self-hatred and misery. But it isn't a dream that would remain unfulfilled. It is a dream that would turn into his reality.





	1. Coming Out

There. He has finally done it.

He has finally finished the monstrous, soul-sappingly wearing, exceedingly precious and personal project that he had been working on all these months.

A year, in fact.

He decided to post his video with the same exact line as its title as he had ended his very important and very short and perilously blunt email to his family.

_‘Basically I’m Gay’._

He thought it’d be fitting.

Time to finally consider the eighty percent or so of those phannies who aren’t cannibals (or demons, as they call themselves as) as family, too.

His crazy, extended, mostly well-meaning family. The family that he and Phil amassed over these ten odd, wild years.

He walks into Phil’s room.

Phil is at his table, eyes lost in laptop screen and a hand reaching into a bowl of pork scratchings.

“It’s finally up.” says Dan, unsure of how he sounds. Confident? Relieved? “For better or worse.”

Phil, turning quickly to meet his eyes, makes a sound through a full mouth, eyes full of pride for him.

"You idiot," sighs Dan.

“For better, it’s for the _better_ of course,” asserts Phil, sitting there on his chair with a delighted smile.

Dan lets out a reluctant, cynical chuckle from which he is, as he is doomed to, unable to hide his affection for this dork of a person.

“Won’t you do something like, I don’t know,” Dan shrugs, “Get up and give me a heartwarming hug or something?”

Phil, laughing contritely, walks over and engulfs him in a hug.

Dan lets himself slacken, breathing out the tight knot in his chest for once, hugging him back, closing his eyes, letting go of those ever-hounding doubts and fears, even if it’s for the ephemeral seconds that their embrace would last.

“I’m so proud of you, Dan.” smiles Phil.

~*~


	2. A Force Unto Itself

**_2009  
_**

So that’s been it. His fucking school days, or to put it more accurately, his days in the fucking ninth circle of hell, were finally over.

The final day of school went by in a blur. No one came up to him to talk anyway. Not even his so called friends.

He is going to ace his A levels and leave this fucking town forever. He has had enough. It’s been enough of penitence for whatever sins he had done in his past life and he is _done_ , absolutely _done_ with this purgatory of a place.

 _But not so fast, Daniel_ , is what he thinks bitterly. Of course, he doesn’t have any money to fulfil any of these fancy wishes. His dad can’t support his university education, he has already made that clear to Dan. He’ll have to sell their house if he wants to do that. His mum hasn’t saved up enough either; _should’ve had some forethought when you were squandering it all away on your silly desperate housewife parties and your endless cigarettes, Grace_.

But really, he thinks its good they aren’t going to spend for him. That’ll make him that much more of a self-made, self-reliant person, and he intends to be exactly that.

Or that’s what he thinks when he goes and joins Asda. He was ready to do whatever it took to earn some money at this point. Whatever it took; except like selling his body or something.

~*~

It’s five am in the bloody cold morning, it’s pitch darkness everywhere, and not a single leaf rustles in the air.

Dan works away (cluelessly blunders through is the more appropriate way of putting it) at the godawfully enormous and brightly lit place, beginning at a godawfully ungodly hour, bloody five am in the morning, and wishes for death until, mercifully, it is eight am and he yeets out of there.

Its not his fault that the place has forty thousand aisles and customers as braindead and stupid as him. _Where can I find sun-maid California raisins?_ Uh, in the bloody canned goods aisle or something?

He reaches home and sleeps until its twelve thirty in the noon. He only bothered to mechanically shove spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth before dropping, dead-inside, on his bed, and promptly falling into that heavy sort of sleep that is never refreshing and gives you a headache later in the day like you had ten jetlags at once (not that he would know what a jetlag feels like because he hasn’t travelled long distances ever and has pretty much spent the entirety of his eighteen years rotting away in the same goddamn place).

His grandma drops by later with chicken casserole, and sits with him at the dinner table sympathizing with him when he narrates yet another sob story to her through mouthfuls of chicken casserole.

Before she leaves, though, she delicately hints that she knows of the kind of ‘wayward path’ that he has been treading lately, saying that, ‘Dan, you do know that you can tell me anything, anything on your mind, anything bothering you, no matter how silly or stupid you think it is. I’m always here for you, dear.’

Way to make him feel guilty before he goes in like an hour to meet… _a certain someone_ he met on Formspring. Nah, tough luck, grandma; he’s not going to tell her what it is.

What’s bothering him is not silly or stupid in the slightest. His family would have a fucking cardiac arrest over it.

If she only knew the full extent of his ‘wayward path’.

It’s a matter of fucking life and death. It’s a matter that directly concerned his existence.

Because it’s only been a year since he attempted suicide over this.

Yeah. Real silly and stupid. Like having a crush on some stupid girl and her rejecting him and him having a stupid teeny heartbreak over it.

How he wishes he was that stupid teen his grandma suspects he is, and not this complicated mess, with emo songs resounding in his head and raging homosexuality coursing in his veins.

~*~

 _We're going down, down in an earlier round_  
_And sugar, we're going down swinging_  
_I'll be your number one with a bullet_  
_A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it_

Dan has quickly figured out that Dylan from Formspring is a fucking jerk with – as the _Fall Out Boy_ song blaring in his car goes – a God complex. _God_ he is such a fucking narcissist.

In the bare five minutes that they had a semblance of a conversation before Dylan started to open his fly and push Dan down to his knees, Dylan has already bragged about the scores of chicks he has banged. And this is just an ‘experimentation’.

Besides, Dan looked so much like a chick, he said as a compliment. It’s like banging any other chick.

Great song selection, Dan will give him that, while he is down on his knees, trying to cram his gangly legs in the backseat, as he blew this amazing, sweet, kind person.

“Stop. using. your. teeth! Goddamit,” hisses Dylan through his teeth, ruthlessly tightening his fingers in Dan’s hair and tugging. Dan pulls away with a muffled scream, choking now.

He’s completely red in the face, panicking, and regretting every decision that led him to this moment. So much for ‘learning’ and ‘figuring things out’. He’s currently being manhandled and treated like shit. Because he is just a fun fling, he is just a –

“Fucking fag.” spits Dylan, sitting up a little. “Why did you stop?”

“Er,” says Dan nervously, “Are we still roleplaying, or…” He has good fucking reason to be nervous. Dylan has that look in his eye. The sort of look that people who carry around a machete in their car’s trunk might have.

“I’ll roleplay your mum, fucking cunt,” says Dylan, exasperated, grabbing hold of Dan’s hair and shoving him back in.

Dan barely has the time to brace himself for the assault, before he is choking on a mouth full of Dylan.

~*~

The moment Dan gets home, he takes a long and thorough shower.

The word _whore_ tries to surface from the depths of his subconscious, but he only is laughing, replaying the events in his head with his eyes closed, shampooing his hair.

He really was lucky to get out of that car, wasn’t he?

 _‘Sugar we’re going down swinging, I’ll be your number one with a bullet’_ he sings, amid bouts of chuckles.

That fucking song. That fucking song is going to be stuck in his head for a month now isn’t it. And it’ll be forever associated with this great adventure he just had. Dylan, that fucktard, he kept the song on a loop. Fucktard. It played the entire time, the entire time, absolutely ludicrously.

Dylan then proceeded to fuck him. And Dan protested. _He didn’t want to lose his virginity to this crazy loon he found on the internet._

Dan thought that was it, that was how he was going to die. He had already started to mournfully say goodbye to his poor grandma and his family in his head, when suddenly, as if through divine intervention, Dylan had an epiphany or something, and he just said, ‘You know what, you look like your pissing yourself. I’m sore anyway, it’s not going to be worth it.’

And Dan ran for his life. Well, not literally. He barely tucked everything in before getting the hell out of Dylan’s car and walking away very fast.

It was only when he reached home and got into the bathroom when he realized that his emo hair was a rat’s nest the whole time on his way back home.

Also that he was extremely lucky to get out of that car unscathed, of course.

After the shower, and after a while of trying to stifle the word _whore_ struggling its way out again, he knows just what to do.

Drown it by blaring _Muse_ in his bedroom.

He is lying on the floor of his bedroom at a precarious angle, with his feet up on the table, as he stares at the block of evening sky he can see from his window. It’s turning darker, intensifying into a turbulent pink and purple. The clouds are pink, and scattered, and fleeing across the sky.

His eyes are seemingly in a trance, and his ears hear nothing but the riffs, the beats, the music…

If his eyes tear up a little, it’s got nothing to do with anything. It’s just the good music, he reckons.

“Dan!”

His door flies open. He turns his head to see his mum standing at his doorway, looking extremely pissed.

“How many times have I told you not to play loud music? Adrian is doing his homework and you have to do this everytime, everytime!”

“How many times have I told you to knock before entering?” says Dan, rolling his eyes, turning his head back, shutting his eyes and pretending for the next few seconds that he can’t see her.

She storms in, lowers the volume, before storming back out, and shutting the door with a bang behind her.

Dan scoffs, clenches his jaws, and tries not to get up and hurl the stereo across the room or something.

He contemplates getting up and turning the volume all the way up, until it rocks through the walls and the floors, and see what happens next, see what his mum does, see if Adrian is then doing his homework. But then thinks better of it.

 _It’s not worth it_ ; just like Dylan had to say about him earlier in the day.

He is reminded of something else. Something far, far better than exacting revenge or simmering in rage or whatever. No, his evening deserves to be spent in a better way.

He gets up from the floor, stops the song playing sorrily like an ashamed shell of its former self, sits down on his chair, and opens his computer.

He goes to YouTube; to this channel called AmazingPhil.

Yeah, this is what he does when he isn’t stalking accounts on Formspring or lying on his bedroom floor blasting emo songs while staring up emptily at the sky. Watch this guy called Phil Lester. He stalks Phil, too, on Formspring, ofcourse. Can’t do without the stalking.

There’s absolutely no chance he might ever meet this guy. First of all, he is a fucking angel. Almost too good to exist. Second of all, he is a moderately famous youtuber; if not the top tier, he is at least infinitely more valid than Dan.

Why would he ever want to give Dan’s comments a second glance.

But Dan is kind of addicted to his channel. He genuinely finds him funny.

And he can’t help but leave not-thirst comments.

Like, ‘Nice video, Phil.’ ‘I really love your content, Phil.’ ‘We have the same taste in music, Phil.’ ‘You really are amazing, amazing Phil.’

Okay the last one was a bit too absolutely embarrassing, but he really can’t help it. Can’t help but be drawn to this fellow emo.

Something in him keeps making him do this; it’s a force unto itself. Something out of this world. Something he can’t make sense of.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no idea how Formspring worked, if they even had private messaging or direct messaging or whatever. Hope you forgive any inconsistencies or errors in my understanding of it. Feel free to leave a kudos/comment! Hope you liked it. More to come, the lovely times, the turbulent times, the 2012 times, the conjoined twins times, the 2019 times ^^ I love them so, so much. Dan's story resonated a lot with me, I cant stress enough just how much. I went through almost the exact same things that he did. I so relate to him.


	3. Hurt and Comfort

Steadily, those not-thirst comments turn bolder. He isn’t even kidding himself anymore. He knows what it is at this point:

Outright thirst comments.

**_Phil Lester_ **

_Story so far.i went out and bought_  
_milkshake. i fell in love with the cashier._  
_plastic bag on a hot oven. melt._  
_I HAVE HOT WATER_  
_IT IS SUNNY!_

_3:26 PM - 28 May 09_

**_Dan_Howell_ **

_@AmazingPhil Butterscotch with white Malteasers :p omnomnom_

_  
_ **_Phil Lester_ **

_Woahh nightmare D: shouldn’t watch horror  
films before I sleep_

_11:47 - 28 May 09_

**_Dan_Howell_ **

_@AmazingPhil ohh.. in mine aliens invaded and blew up the moon, then michael jackson appeared and saved us from the apocalypse :\_

Formspring is his den, social media where he awaits his salvation. He raided Phil’s accounts, fucking combed through them, with more manic precision than an FBI agent.

One day, one fucking day, he is going to get Phil Lester to reply him back. He is as determined and filled with fire as a Catholic fanatic waging a crusade.

_And who the fuck is that cashier?_

Dan is going to find her, and kill her.

Well, not really. But he really has a mind to.

~*~

It isn't long before he catches himself in that thought.

He really is going to make himself go through this isn’t he?

He is going to up and fall for Phil fucking Lester, a guy on YouTube.

Great. He is worse than the worst of fangirls. The worst of groupies. He is going to let himself live in a fantasy dream world, where he dreams of being in a relationship with some internet star.

But that’s not the only worst, shameful thing here.

You see, he has been determined to ‘figure himself out’, no matter at what cost. Even if it means being reckless like a madman. Even if it means occasionally being a whore.

Even if it means cheating on his girlfriend.

Yeah, about that.

He got himself a girlfriend at some point in the previous year. Because you see, he decided to meet his adversaries head-on with armor and sword, fucking charge at them, than be beheaded in the battlefield that his school-life was.

Here, every weapon in his arsenal and every piece of armour in his armory is just this one person – his girlfriend Kate.

And she has no idea, of course, that he had decided long ago to be a man-slut and whore himself out to random guys for one fucking purpose that is, you guessed it right, ‘figuring himself out’.

Because if there is one thing he will do before damaging his psyche beyond repair and be traumatized by bullies forever, it is ‘figure things out’. Yes, he is a poufter, doing shameful pouftery, but fuck him if he isn’t someone determined to salvage what’s left of his sanity and his identity after more than a decade of school-penitentiary.

Kate has texted him, telling that they should go out somewhere this evening. What a joy.

~*~

“You know, they really are sorry they kind of brushed you off that day,” says Kate, about his friends. “I mean Brian was absolutely sorry, he told me he was so sorry like over and over, and I was like, it’s okay Brian, Dan has been through the same shit so many times to be even bothered by it.”

Dan snorts humorlessly.

“So well,” Kate continues to walk on eggshells, “They were wondering if we could all meet for a party at Leonard’s place.”

“Mhmm, I don’t mind.” mutters Dan.

“So, how long do you plan on working in Asda?” asks Kate, wisely switching the conversation to something else. She has learnt when to start and when to stop by now.

Dan, he is difficult to deal with; and if you aren’t as careful as with a fragile china, and as tactful as a diplomat, you’re gone.

They’re at a tiny restaurant. Thankfully no one from his school is here to pass him sneering looks.

Dan listlessly stabs at the ribs on his plate. “Work for a year. There’s no other way to pay for university.”

“And you’re still determined to take up law?”

“Yep.”

“ _Why_? You know you aren’t really interested in it. What are you trying to prove? I know you are into creative stuff, you love theatre, why do you have to prove those _absolute jerks_ that you aren’t some,” she stops to do dramatic air quotes while rolling her eyes, “ _‘gay theatre nerd’_ or whatever imbecile thing they label you as?”

This, this is why he loves her. And he fucking hates that he loves her.

Right now, it inexplicably boils over as intense anger. He controls it, gritting his teeth. “Will you shut up?” is what he says very quietly, not looking at her.

He _knows_ that she looks like she is punched in the gut. He doesn’t have to look at her to fucking know that.

She throws her hands up a little as if to say ‘Yep, I’m fucking done for today’, clutches a napkin and puts it to her mouth as if to steady her quivering lips, before quickly placing it down.

“Yeah, whatever,” she whispers tremulously.

He knows that tears sting her eyes. He knows it, because he has hurt her enough times to sense it from a light year away.

~*~


	4. Finally, you reply

The very morning, it seems, begins with a strange stir in the air. A prophetic strangeness, a strange momentousness, he can’t quite put his finger on it.

He woke up with a start, his heart beating fast. The room is as dark as the night outside the window. He blindly swats around for his phone until he finds it under his pillow, and blearily peers into it to see the time, wondering if he is horribly, horribly late for work, and if this startled feeling in his chest is his subconscious already freaking out.

What he finds though is that its 3:58, just two minutes before his alarm would ring. He turns off the alarm now that he is awake (and dazed out of his mind).

He gets out of bed, hurries to the bathroom, flicks on the light, and immediately looks into the mirror. The alarmed and confused face that stares back is starkly pale, with tousled brown hair burnished auburn under the light.

He finally snorts at himself and picks up his toothbrush. Great. Getting mood swings like a pms-ing girl now are we.

~*~

The strange restlessness in his heart stayed with him that Sunday as he worked, as he drove back home, and as he slept until it was three in the afternoon.

It wouldn’t be until around an hour later that he will discover why he has been feeling _so_ _ready to jump_ this whole time.

They say that there’s no magic in the universe, that it’s all explained by reducing things to mere matter and atoms. But what else can explain the fact that what he has been anticipating this whole time was, in fact, Phil replying to one of his tweets.

He cannot believe his eyes. He cannot.

Phil Lester. AmazingPhil. Has replied to him.

**_Phil Lester_ **

_seeing Drag me to hell tonight :D_

_11:34 AM – 2 Jun 09_

**_Dan_Howell_ **

_@AmazingPhil better go jogging, you need to have a good heart to live through the surprise every 10 seconds :)_

**_Phil Lester_ **

_@Dan_Howell i can’t wait :]] (it’s too hot to jog tho, can i just sunbathe plz. i am brave_

_Oh my god, oh my god,_ is all he can think of, like a cacophonous chant in his head.

He instantly DMs Phil on twitter. This would be his seventh message. What Dan discovers, with a jolt, is that his previous messages to Phil have been marked as read.

Struggling through yet another bout of panic attack, barely keeping his heart from beating out of his chest, he types Phil a message with shaking fingers.

_So I see you have…_

Dan deletes his words…

_So hey I.._

Deleting the words one by one…

_Finally you reply…_

Delete..

_Phil, wow did you really just…_

Delete..

_Hey_

Heart thudding quick and hard, Dan hits send.

Hey. Just a hey.

And now he will have to wait. And see if he replies to this now.

He prays to every god out there for Phil to reply again, this time directly to him, only for his eyes to see.

~*~

He struggles through dinner that evening. _For it’s been three hours since he has sent that single ‘hey’_. His mum gives him concerned looks, but doesn’t question his visibly ashen appearance. She probably chalks it up to teenage angst, and that isn’t a rare occurrence in Dan’s life. She probably thinks its one of those days.

Only, it isn’t. It’s a very different day.

He isn’t angsty. _He is freaking the fuck out,_ adrenaline rushing through every vein, his stupid brain anticipating some fight or flight scenario when infact, he is just dizzy and stupefied.

_Phil fucking Lester replied to him._

He takes his phone out for the hundredth time. He places it on his thigh, peering at it, hiding his agitation under his fringe.

“Dan, do you mind keeping you phone away while we’re having dinner?” says his mum snappishly.

“Sorry.” mutters Dan, quickly shoving his phone back into his pocket.

He struggles through the dinner for another minute, before he gives his chair a restless scrape and he is up.

“Dan, you’ve barely eaten anything!”

“Sorry, I’m kind of…I’m not that hungry today.” says Dan, already heading upstairs to his room.

He can feel his parents’ troubled eyes on him. He closes his eyes to everything that concerns the outside world, cocooning himself, with every step, into a world of his own – a dark, chaotic, and confusing place. He closes the door behind him and leans against it, tipping his head back and trying to breathe.

_Calm down, calm down…_

It shocks him just how much he is getting riled up over this. It shocks him just how much Phil Lester has affected him - both physically, for he is unable to eat or breathe, and mentally, for he is unable to think of anything else other than him. All this without him ever being in his physical presence.

_It’s been three hours since he sent him that message._

Dan lies on his bed with his earphones in, his eyes taking on that dead and vacant look that they’ve taken on countless times, when he has lain like this, studying the ceiling. Muse blares in his ears, loud enough to make them bleed, drowning him in an angst that matches the feeling that fills his heart.

He’s stupid to think that that reply meant anything. As if this is the beginning of some fairytale romance. As if this is the beginning of anything. So, _so fucking stupid_.

His phone buzzes with a notification.

_You have a new direct message._

**_Phil Lester_ **

_Hey :)_

It hits him like a ton of bricks. Stunned, the room around him spinning, he stares at his phone.

The day did begin with a strange stir in the air. The instincts just _know_ , don’t they? Before you could even fathom what awaits you.

~*~


End file.
